Pullman, Pratchett, and Potter author denounce age banding for children’s books

5 August 2008 (22:19) Interviews Terry Pratchett News News Archives

Prominent children’s author Philip Pullman is leading a campaign against age banding, a program designed by publishers to guide consumers buying books for children. More than 700 authors and illustrators, including of course Terry Pratchett, have signed the Statement by Philip Pullman, which says, in part, “the proposal to put an age-guidance figure on books for children is ill-conceived, damaging to the interests of young readers, and highly unlikely, despite the claims made by those publishers promoting the scheme, to make the slightest difference to sales.”

The statement also claims that “each child is unique, and so is each book.  Accurate judgments about age suitability are impossible, and approximate ones are worse than useless….

“Everything about a book is already rich with clues about the sort of reader it hopes to find – jacket design, typography, cover copy, prose style, illustrations. These are genuine connections with potential readers, because they appeal to individual preference. An age-guidance figure is a false one, because it implies that all children of that age are the same.”

Pratchett explained why he was opposed to age banding, saying “when I was a child I read books far too old for me and sometimes far too young for me. Every reading child is different. Introduce them to the love of reading, show them the way to the library and let them get on with it. The space between the young readers eyeballs and the printed page is a holy place and officialdom should trample all over it at their peril.”

Most children’s publishers in the U.K., including Scholastic and HarperCollins, were to introduce age banding this fall.  The plan, led by Random House, featured a motif placed near the bar code with the categories 5+, 7+, 9+, 11+ and 13+/teen.
The Publishers Association’s Children’s Book Group claimed that 86% of book buyers approved of the proposed age guidance, while 40% said they would probably buy more books with the plan.

As of July 3, publishers are divided, as Bloomsbury (the Harry Potter publishers), Walker Books, and other major publishers are opposed to age banding, while Random House, Scholastic, and Egmont continue to support it.

Scholastic agreed to dispense with age banding on Pullman’s books, but as Pullman found that not all authors had that advantage, he “signed this petition because I believe passionately in what it says. It is an act of solidarity not only with other authors, but with booksellers and librarians.”

The authors’ campaign placed a full page ad in Britain’s book trade premier publication The Bookseller, where Philip Pullman and over 80 others publicly disassociated themselves from age banding.

J. K. Rowling, Jacqueline Wilson, Alexander McCall Smith, Neil Gaiman, Quentin Blake, Beverley Naidoo, Eva Ibbotson, Iain Banks, Diana Wynne Jones, Lynne Reid Banks, and Anthony Horowitz all joined the anti-age banding campaign.

If you would like to add your name to a list of over 3500 readers, librarians, teachers, writers, and others, send an email to signup@notoagebanding.org.  See the contact page of the No to Age Banding site for more details.

Philip Pullman’s statement against the age guidance concluded, “writers take great care not to limit their readership unnecessarily. To tell a story as well and inclusively as possible, and then find someone at the door turning readers away, is contrary to everything we value about books, and reading, and literature itself.”